Adopt a Leadership Attitude: Only you, not Washington, can determine your business’ future.

Republican business owners and managers, read this post. (Democrats too.)

Whatever side of the aisle you may be on, the die is cast. The democratic process has worked. Americans have elected the next President of the United States of America. #44, by last count.

Many of you are probably pretty excited that your guy won today. Many of you are probably also angry that your guy didn’t. All of you are probably worried about what will come next: The simple “okay, now what?” question. Will I still have a job in six months? Will my company continue to prosper in the next year? Will I be able to hire new employees this spring, or will I have to let people go? And on and on and on.

My advice to you: Chill.

If you are among the Obama/Biden supporters, I am going to guess that your outlook today is pretty positive. You’re looking at a bright 4-8 years ahead. In your mind, this will probably be the best time to start a new business venture, to travel abroad, to partner with great people and companies.

If you are among the McCain/Palin/Joe The Plumber supporters, your outlook is probably pretty gloomy. You’re looking at what may be disastrous 4-8 years ahead. In your mind, this will probably be the worst time to start a new business venture, travel overseas or partner with great people and companies.

Funny how your perceptions – and ONLY your perceptions – affect the way you envision your business’ outlook in the next few years.

So my advice to you again: Chill. Take a deep breath. Seriously. What happens next in Washington won’t affect you all that much at all. Relax.

Unless you’re big like Exxon, Walmart and at&t, whomever happens to be sitting in the Oval Office really has zero bearing on your business’ success. None. You may think it does, you may have come up with a list of reasons why McCain would have helped you be more successful and why Obama will kill your profits, but you’re wrong. The success of your company depends entirely on you: The CEO. The CMO. The salesperson. The customer service rep. The franchisee. The cashier. The designer. The IT guy. The PR manager. The product manager. The greeter. Success or failure are entirely yours to own.

Likewise, if you voted Democrat, having Barack Obama in the White House won’t make your business successful either. His presidency won’t miraculously cure the ills of our society and restore the market to its pre-crash bubble days. The truth is, regardless of who sits in the White House and who owns the Senate and House of Reps, we have some rough terrain ahead. We’re all going to have to be smart, innovative and resourceful if we’re going to be successful. Neither Obama nor Biden will do anything to help you make payroll, attract and retain customers, or launch the next game-changing product. They have bigger issues to deal with than you – even if you’re the coolest, smartest, hardest working person on the planet.

Reality vs. imaginary dragons: Focus on what you know, not on what you don’t.

What the next 4 years have in store, nobody knows. Higher taxes? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. Best case scenario: Our taxes won’t change much. Worst case scenario, they will increase incrementally. As in: Not enough to make much of an impact on anyone, rich, poor, or somewhere in the middle. Even if I were in the $250K+ bracket (which I am clearly not), watching my taxes increase a little more to help ease our embarrassing trillion dollar deficit would be a small price to pay. What’s done is done. Let’s fix our mess, learn from our mistakes, and move on.

I only mention this to point out that whatever happens with taxes next year… or the year after that – or whenever – should be the least of your worries right now. Possible tax increases are not threatening your business right now, and won’t anytime soon. Get your mind back on the present. On what obstacles you are faced with today. There will be plenty of time to worry about next year’s challenges twelve months from now.

In other words, before we start speculating about the next four years, we might all want to start thinking about the next six months. What problems are you really facing between now and next spring? What are the immediate problems you need to find solutions to? These are the real questions you should be focusing on.

You may not be completely aware of it, but your emotional outlook impacts your success. Yeah, I know, it sounds like I’m spewing self-help bullshizzle right now, but it’s a fact: Believe in success, visualize it, map it out, and you will have a much greater chance of making it happen than if you instead convince yourself that your business will fail. Positive attitudes win races, win deals and win business. Positive attitudes win.

Negative attitudes don’t.

Have you ever been around someone who is just soooo negative? The sky is falling, nothing is going right, the world is coming to an end? After a few minutes, you start to feel the same way. Their negativity starts to affect you. It’s a natural thing. We all feed off each other’s moods and dramas. In the same way, as a CEO or business manager, if you’re negative, that mood affects everyone you come in contact with, starting with your employees and ending with your customers.

Consider this: Your positive attitude can infect your customer touchpoints in such a way that one short encounter with them tomorrow morning could set the stage for an afternoon of wonderfully positive interactions with hundreds of customers. Like the happy cashier at the checkout who makes you feel great about your shopping experience, because their day started with a wonderful experience at work. Likewise, your negative attitude might affect your customer touchpoints in such a way that a brief, negative encounter with them tomorrow morning might make them worry about their jobs, about whether or not they are seen as valuable employees and whether or not they even enjoy working there. What kind of interactions do you think they will have with the hundreds of customers they touch that day?

Your attitude affects the direction and success of your business every single day.

What’s interesting is that most of the time, positive an negative attitudes are entirely self-created. The world around you is the same from day to day. You make the choice to see it either in a positive light or a negative one. Whomever happens to be sitting in the Oval Office, the world essentially is the same today as it was yesterday. Only your outlook has changed. If you have concerns about your business, if you have real problems to solve, then focus on finding solutions for those specific concerns and problems. Don’t waste time and energy worrying about “what if” questions that may never turn into real issues for you. Even if you are a hard-core Republican, understand that President-elect Obama’s policies, beliefs and actions will not have a direct impact on your business anymore than if you had voted for him. Unless you are a Fortune 100 company, the who the President of the United States happens to be has pretty much zero impact on your business. Your fears in regards to what Obama will do in office are still in the realm of imagination. Until something actually happens to affect your business, you are worrying about nothing.

It’s kind of like this: You’re a knight and around you is a small band of foot soldiers looking to you for leadership. Ahead of you is a dark forest you have to cross. You’ve heard that the forest is teaming with enemy soldiers and ambushes, but your mission is to get to the other side. What do you do? Do you figure out the best way to deal with the problem at hand, or do you sit there and worry about other things that may or may not come to be someday that have zero bearing on your immediate situation? You’re letting dragons and ogres (imaginary creatures) distract you from your real issues. Pretty silly when you look at it that way right?

Focus on what you can control. Focus on what you know. Focus on what you can see and affect now: Bringing more value to your customers. Increasing traffic to your website or stores. Improving customer service. Improving employee morale. Building strong user communities. Finding better ways to engage with your customers, boost customer loyalty, and build the foundations of a stronger brand. There are ways you can cut costs without cutting corners. There are ways to cut costs and keep all of your staff employed. There are ways to cut costs and actually grow your business. Find them. Every problem facing your business today is either an opportunity for you to leap ahead tomorrow, or an excuse to fail.

There will always be obstacles in your path. The odds will always be against you. The world will always conspire to make you fail. Cheaper imports, bigger competitors, better tools somewhere else, better tax breaks across the river, lower rent down the street… There will always be dark woods ahead filled with unseen enemies. Get used to it. It’s just how the world works. New elections, the economy, competition, new technologies transforming your industry, all of these things are part of the game. Your attitude will determine whether or not these obstacles and challenges help you build the next chapter in your company’s fascinating success story, or its sad conclusion.

Leadership Lesson: Taking the initiative always gives you a tactical advantage. The alternative (letting someone else decide your fate for you) is no alternative at all.

Great leaders aren’t usually characterized by uneventful tenures and comfortable lives without challenge. Great leaders are people like Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Ghandi and Susan B. anthony, who in spite of overwhelming odds, in spite of the entire world conspiring against them, in spite of being faced with very dark moments of self doubt and despair, managed to embrace the impossible challenges of their times and come out of the woods transformed, cleansed of their fears, and most importantly: victorious.

As a business leader, you will be tested in the coming months. No question. The coming year will probably be the most trying of your entire career. You may work harder than you ever have before, risk more than you ever have before, and want to quit more often than ever before. But you know what, as long as you keep your wits about you, keep your focus on addressing your immediate challenges and keep your eye on making it through, you will. Not only that but you will come out ahead of your less focused and enthusiastic competitors. When you’re old and gray, you’ll be able to look back on this time and understand how it helped define you as a human being and as a leader. And chances are that every ounce of success you enjoy once the economy recovers will lead straight back to the decisions you made during this challenging time in your career. This moment in time WILL define you. How is up to you.

Now that the election drama is over, it’s time to get your head back in the game and give some serious thought to how you can turn immediate challenges into serious opportunities. If you didn’t vote for Barack Obama, don’t let yourself be distracted by negative thoughts and irrational fears. Your future and your company’s future are 100% in your hands. Not Washington’s. Let’s all put politics aside now and get back to the business of getting the economy back on track, starting with you.

So tell me: What is the biggest problem facing your business today?

How can those of us who know how to help businesses grow and prosper (my blogroll is only the tip of the iceberg) help you get through thee challenging times? Come on. Talk to me.

14 Responses

Excellent post! Right on target. Each business owner/freelancer has the power to claim tactical advantage through a bias for positive action. So what should you be doing now?

Expect business owners to go into heavy planning mode now for the new year. The landscape has come into focus and they will all be looking for ways to operate more effectively in the days ahead. Decide how you can help them do that and start telling stories about it now. Your success stories can help them build a vision for their own future. If you do that, you’ll get hired.

Don’t have success stories? Get some. Go find someone to help now. Your church, a non-profit, a small business. Start building a history of success and then promote it like crazy.

Good luck to all of us as we work through this downturn and into an economic recovery.

Well, said. My concern is that the “$250K+ bracket” will expand when Democrats control the executive and legislative branches. Do you really believe the deficit will decrease in the coming years? We could debate all day the effects of taxing businesses? All in all I like your positive outlook and agree. Thanks.

Long time, no read. But this one put me right back into your readers lane. Great riff.

Reminds me of something I read in an article recently about business not being about trying to avoid making mistakes, but making sure you’re able to recover when you make one. Build strength and flexibility instead of avoiding (human(e)) mistakes or so-called weaknesses.

Basically, Obama has won anything but a chance to make things happen.

But it should also make us realize we too have our chances to make things happen, we have them every single day. And we don’t need a billiondollar campaign or an election to grant us permission to act upon our beliefs, to realize our goals, to make our dreams come true, to create a better world.

(Nevertheless, a little help from our friends – whoever they might be – is always welcome.)

See, this is exactly what I am talking about: You are concerned about what “may” happen. Your mind is in the wrong place. Olympic athletes, soldiers, researchers, and surgeons are great at their jobs because they are able to focus on the task at hand, not the “what if” questions lurking around some distant corner.

Every time you take your mind off the ball, you start to lose the ball. Don’t do it. Keep your focus and work on doing what you do, which is to create kickass websites and make your clients happy they hired you for their projects. THAT’s real. Fear, concerns, worries are not real. They’re negative distractions.

There is a very clear difference between preparing and worrying. Should you worry? No. Should you prepare? (Adapt) Yes!

🙂

Will the $250K+ bracket erode down to $120?
We don’t know.
Will the deficit be eliminated in 8 years?
We don’t know.
Will any of this have an effect on your business?
We don’t know.

Even in the wost case scenario – one in which your taxes increase starting @ $120K, the deficit doubles and Wall Street continues to stumble, will you REALLY just give up on your business? Will your clients give up on theirs? Is there so little value in what you and your network of clients do that incremental changes in tax policy cause you to fail? Of course not.

Is there a chance that we will end up with 5-15% less net income for a couple of years? Maybe. It’s possible. I’ll grant you that. But it won’t stop me or slow me down. And we’ll eventually balance the budget. (If Clinton did it, anyone can!)

Don’t worry. Just focus on the passion, enthusiasm and degree of professionalism you are known for, and focus on creating even more value for your clients.

The next year won’t be easy, but if you can weather that minor storm, you and your clients will come out stronger in the end.

Personally, here’s what I think:

1. The $250K+ bracket will not drop to $200K or $120K. (Also remember that the proposed tax increase starts at dollar 250,000,001, and NOT at dollar 000,000,001.)

2. Some of the Bush tax cuts – which are running out this year – may not be renewed. (Technically, this won’t be a new tax, but the return of an old tax. I don’t like it, but get ready. McCain would have taken the same path on this one anyway.)

3. We will pay off our deficit and balance the budget. Probably by the end of year #6.

4. More small businesses will be created in the next 3 years than in the last 6. (And they’re all going to need websites!!!)

Very good points. I’m very conservative politically myself so the guy who one was not my first choice but neither was the opposition either. All that being said it drives me batty when many in some of my circles always talk like some things are the end of the world. In 1980 some conspiracy theorist types claimed Reagan was the anti-christ, George H.W. Bush was freaking people out with the “new world order”, Bill Clinton came along and while they talked bad about him on the surface he was the best thing that happened to a lot of talk radio show hosts!

Even during the Great Depression you still had innovative minds who didn’t think all gloom and doom but saw coming technology changes and grabbed the bull by the horns so to speak.

Yes, their will be some “change” but no matter who is in charge I know it depends on those of us “out here” and not inside the beltway. They are both challenges and opportunities to face.

Nice post Olivier, I like your outlook and agree that ultimately folks are in charge of their own destiny (wait… I just sounded conservative… oh that’s right, I am!). However, as a quicky growing LLC who get’s taxed through “pass through” I am keeping a watchful eye for what’s coming around the bend. Indeed, I know a few other smart, successful business owners who are doing the same. Uncle Sam already made more on their businesses each year for the last few years than they did or the business netted. The cost of paying Uncle Sam to do business is high, and the idea of it getting higher is not one that leaves these folks jumping for joy. FYI.